Mahatma Gandhi - Violence Quotes

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Once one assumes an attitude of intolerance, there is no knowing where it will take one. Intolerance, someone has said, is violence to the intellect and hatred is violence to the heart.

Mahatma Gandhi
Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

Mahatma Gandhi
As the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.

Mahatma Gandhi
This is no appeal made by a man who does not know his business. I have been practising with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed. Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed, I have ascribed it to my imperfections. I claim no perfection for my self. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but another name for God. In the course of the search the discovery of non-violence came to me. Its spread is my life-mission. I have no interest in living except for the prosecution of that mission.

Mahatma Gandhi
Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.

Mahatma Gandhi
Belief in non-violence is based on the assumption that human nature in the essence is one and therefore unfailingly responds to the advances of love...

Mahatma Gandhi
Non-violence should never be used as a shield for cowardice. It is a weapon for the brave.

Mahatma Gandhi
Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for nonviolence.

Mahatma Gandhi
Non -violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness is the ornament.

Mahatma Gandhi
In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that He should allow such things [as the war] to go on. My non-violence seems almost impotent. But the answer comes at the end of the daily quarrel that neither God nor non-violence is impotent. Impotence is in men. I must try on without losing faith even though I may break in the attempt.

Mahatma Gandhi
I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India's ills, and that her civilisation required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection.

Mahatma Gandhi
I have no secret methods. I know no diplomacy save that of truth. I have no weapon but non-violence.

Mahatma Gandhi
By using violence to subjugate one another we are using violence against our own souls.

Mahatma Gandhi
Peace through superior violence inevitably leads to the atom bomb and all that it stands for.

Mahatma Gandhi
Experience convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth & violence. Even if my belief is a fond delusion, it will be admitted that it is a fascinating delusion.

Mahatma Gandhi
That religion and that nation will be blotted out of the face of the earth which pins its faith on injustice, untruth or violence.

Mahatma Gandhi
I read Carlyle's French Revolution while I was in prison, and Pandit Jawaharlal has told me something about the Russian revolution. But it is my conviction that inasmuch as these struggles were fought with the weapon of violence they failed to realize the democratic ideal. In the democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy established by non-violence, there will be equal freedom for all. Everybody will be his own master. It is to join a struggle for such democracy that I invite you today. Once you realize this you will forget the differences between the Hindus and Muslims, and think of yourselves as Indians only, engaged in the common struggle for independence.

Mahatma Gandhi
Had we adopted non-violence as the weapon of the strong, because we realised that it was more effective than any other weapon, in fact the mightiest force in the world, we would have made use of its full potency and not have discarded it as soon as the fight against the British was over or we were in a position to wield conventional weapons. But as I have already said, we adopted it out of our helplessness. If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.

Mahatma Gandhi
He who trifles with truth cuts at the root of Ahimsa [non-violence]. He who is angry is guilty of Himsa.

Mahatma Gandhi
Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties.

Mahatma Gandhi
Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill-will against all that lives. It therefore embraces even sub-human life, not excluding noxious insects and beasts. They have not been created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator, we should find their proper place in His creation.

Mahatma Gandhi
Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence.

Mahatma Gandhi
Non-co-operators will make a serious mistake if they seek to convert people to their creed by violence.

Mahatma Gandhi
My non-violence bids me dedicate myself to the service of the minorities.

Mahatma Gandhi
Intolerance is a species of violence and therefore against our creed.

Mahatma Gandhi
Though I cannot claim to be a Christian in the sectarian sense, the example of Jesus suffering is a factor in the composition of my undying faith in non-violence which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal.

Mahatma Gandhi
I would risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of the whole race.

Mahatma Gandhi
It is no non-violence if we merely love those that love us. It is non-violence only when we love those that hate us.

Mahatma Gandhi
I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

Mahatma Gandhi
If we want Swaraj to be built on non-violence, we will have to give the villages their proper place.

Mahatma Gandhi